At first I thought the Cannes Shabbat dinner was another clever networking angle. Religion is big at the box office these days. And what better way for a couple of young producers to rub shoulders with some of Hollywood\’s big movers and shakers than to invite them to a Shabbat dinner?
I have a mere two degrees of separation from Yasser Arafat. Down the street from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is a little hair salon where I get my hair cut.
In Paris on Sept. 28, two-dozen men armed with clubs and wearing motorcycle helmets stormed the Pays de Cocagne bookshop on the Rue Vieille du Temple to the cries of Israel vaincra! (Israel will be victorious.) Six people were slightly injured.
A Jewish community center in Paris that serves kosher meals to the poor was set on fire early Sunday morning. The soup kitchen, a converted synagogue on the ground floor of a five-story residential building on the Rue Popincourt in Paris\’ 11th District was partially destroyed. Anti-Semitic graffiti, Nazi symbols and references to Islam were found on the center\’s walls.
This is the season of le grand départ, when millions of French people leave for their summer vacation. Eighty-four percent of the French population will be going away on holiday this summer, and there are traffic jams hundreds of kilometers long from Paris to the Riviera.
But this year, as the masses pack their bathing suits, say au revoir to their co-workers and squeeze into crowded trains bound for the sea, Jew haters don\’t seem to be taking a holiday.
The spring 2004 fashions have arrived in the chic boutiques of Paris, and along with 50s-style full skirts and prim lace collars, anti-Semitism is back in fashion.
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